Is Seasonal SEO Worth It? Gearing Up For The Holiday Season

Jayson DeMers
, ContributorI demystify SEO and online marketing for business owners.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

NEW YORK, NY - NOVEMBER 12: A new holiday Starbucks cup is viewed on November 12, 2015 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Most search engine optimization (SEO) programs are exclusively focused on long-term gains, and this makes practical sense; after all, SEO is a long-term strategy. So how do you optimize for short-term, temporary seasonal trends?

That’s exactly what some brands are doing right now, gearing up in optimizing for Christmas- and winter-related keywords so they can reap about two months’ worth of benefits for the year.

There’s more than one type of season, but all of them present the same argument for seasonal SEO; there may be an advantage in optimizing your site for any of these seasonal occurrences:

Holidays. Christmas and Halloween are big ones, but you might also have Labor Day sales or other individual events.

Literal seasons. You could take advantage of things like “summer clothing.”

Sales patterns. Your business could see an increase in client or consumer activity during certain times of the year, such as the first quarter.

Trends and fads. You might also have products or services that may be temporary in nature, serving trends and fads.

Analytics Considerations

Before I enter a discussion on whether the ROI of a season-specific optimization strategy is worth the effort it takes to begin one, I want to point out an important analytics consideration that applies to everyone. No matter what type of business you have, there’s probably a degree of seasonality in your business; that might mean an uptick in sales around the holidays, or a sharp decline in a certain month due to your clientele.

Either way, this inherent seasonality demands that you measure your SEO progress in terms of year-over-year metrics, which can give you a much more accurate picture than going month-by-month, at least in the long term.

The Keyword Targeting Tradeoff

Now, let’s take a look at the potential advantages of targeting seasonal-specific keywords, such as holiday-related phrases or keywords relating to a specific trend. There are a couple of powerful tradeoffs here, and you need to know what’s on both sides of the equation if you’re going to make the deal.

You’re going to lose long-term viability and overall potential traffic by opting for seasonal keywords. Incorporating these keywords is a kind of opportunity loss; if you’re focusing on these, you won’t be focusing on your stronger, long-term keywords, which will probably earn you more traffic over the course of many years, since they’re relevant all year long.

However, you’ll also gain short-term relevance and the benefit of lower competition. While these keywords are only relevant for a short time, they become highly relevant during this time, which may outweigh the costs depending on your audience’s search behavior. Also, since they aren’t as viable in the long term, there tends to be less competition surrounding them.

The Escalation Problem

There’s also the problem of escalation; as you know, it takes time for an SEO strategy to be effective. If you choose to start targeting Christmas-related keywords in December, the shopping season will probably be over by the time you start to earn rankings for those keywords. To compensate for this, you’ll need to start several months before you intend to dominate the SERPs.

Seasonal optimization isn’t for every business. These are some questions to ask to see whether it’s truly worth it for yours:

How important is seasonal business? What percentage of sales happen during this season? If it’s exceptionally high, it will be worth the keyword tradeoff I listed above.

How much competition are you facing? If nobody else is optimizing here, you’ll be in the clear to rank and you might as well go for it.

Can you reuse your assets? This is key; it’s an argument for holiday-based optimization and against fad-based optimization. If you can reuse your new assets over and over, it’s a strong check in the “go for it” column.

A General Outline for Success

If you do decide to optimize for a specific season, there are some best practices you’ll need to bear in mind:

Start early. You’ll need at least several weeks to ramp up your efforts.

Keep seasonal content secondary. Your “main” SEO strategy should still take priority; think of this as an addition.

Make your seasonal content evergreen. Do your best to keep your seasonally focused content as evergreen as possible, so you can reuse it in the future.

I can’t say for sure whether a seasonal SEO strategy is in your business’s best interests. Even with all the data in front of me, it would be a tough call. If you know you’ll do this every year, if your competition is low enough, and if you have enough time to ramp up—it could easily be worth it.